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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is poo-pooing this, but in car development years, 2027 is really soon. Their announcement was not that they were about to have their breakthrough, but they are setting up production. And specifically that they are announcing manufacturing partners - this is not "looking for potential factory sites" this is tooling up existing factories.

A lot of other companies are saying 2027-2028 so I'm thinking this could be the real deal.

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It might be the real deal, but the last half dozen times they said it, it wasn't. They don't have much credibility with these statements.

I think this is a bit unfair. In 2017 said they were going to have the technology by 2021. They are a couple of years late, but they say they have the technology in test cars now and are moving to production.

Given it was over 20 years before Lithium batteries were first proposed and when they were commercially viable, we're probably being a bit harsh.

If someone says they'll have something by 2021 and they don't have it in 2025, you've adequately explained why no one believes them. Nobody cares whether or not the delay was justifiable, because they could continue having justifiable delays for the next decade.

Unless they're Elon Musk, apparently.

I think most people also don't believe Elon about these kinds of promises either.

Sure, and yet TSLA stock continues to reach even higher heights of insanity. It's worth almost 6x what Toyota is.

It would seem that life's not fair. Invest in Toyota I guess.

It’s because there is a risk that Teslas unbounded ambitions actually pay off and they destroy all the competition.

And once they have t nobody will even remember the delays

A bit harsh? Toyota have destroyed their own credibility.

I don't even take new battery tech claims seriously AFTER a company begins shipping product. Wake me up when a new battery has been independently tested, the economic viability has been demonstrated, and factory capacity is ramping up to supply enough product to make a meaningful impact in the market.

Wake me up when they've been in use for at least five years so that there are some useful real world statistics about their performance, safety, and degradation levels.

Isn’t that exactly what all the Tesla fans have been saying? I guess the roadster isn’t late now?

From an article last month linked in the above press release:

“Toyota’s all-solid-state EV battery plans officially gained approval from Japan’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (METI). The certification gives Toyota the green light to develop and build next-gen EV batteries as part of Japan’s plans to boost domestic supply.”

Seems like it’s more legit this time.

Is this the same ministry who wanted hydrogen vehicles everywhere? They aimed to have all the buses for the Tokyo Olympics be hydrogen powered for example.

They got two. And the Olympics were postponed.

2027 also feels like a million years away when it's really just a shade over one year away.

It won't happen by 2027. 2028 at the earliest, but still unlikely. It requires new factories, using new processes, new mining operations, new battery production facilities, new designs, staff, training, QA, multiple companies all collaborating together in new ways, it requires tons of cash and approvals, etc. Granted, Japan can get a lot done with handshakes, but this is a very aggressive timeline.

A lot of companies will say a lot of things because it boosts the stock price and costs them nothing. They need good PR to help convince all the parties involved to complete the deals they need to get all this done.

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